Sunday, May 14, 2017

HOLIDAY HORROR: MOTHER’S DAY

Holidays are supposed to be fun occasions. Sure, some holidays are somber events in remembrance of those who have served their nation and even given their lives for them. Still, even those holidays can be times for families and friends to gather at homes and events, or to hit the road and travel across the land. Holidays are generally considered good things.

Holidays are joyous or thoughtful. Which is I am endlessly amused and fascinated by how many horror and monster movies revolve around holidays. You could view a different horror movie on each and every day on the twelve days of Christmas and not come close to watching all the existing Yuletide fear films. There are horror movies for every holiday you can imagine from New Year’s Day to Easter and all around the calendar.

Celebrations of mothers and motherhood have taken place around the world for thousands of years. Our American version of Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908. In West Virginia, Anna Jarvis held a memorial for Ann Reeves Jarvis, a Civil War peace activist who had cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of that terrible conflict. Anna wanted to honor her mom by continuing her work.

Years later, Jarvis did succeed in getting Mother’s Day declared a national holiday - the second Sunday in May - but soon after became resentful of the day’s commercialization. She organized boycotts, threatened lawsuits and protested publically. She was arrested at one such protest for disturbing the peace.

The story of Jarvis and Mother’s Day would make for an entertaining graphic novel that I would buy if someone made it. However, keep in mind that this suggestion is from a guy who delights in horror and monster movies. Mock me if you must, but I consider myself to be a connoisseur of cinematic cheese.

Today’s gooey fun commences with Serial Mom, the 1994 comedy crime horror film starring Kathleen Turner, Sam Watterson and Ricki Lake, and directed by John Waters. It is a dark delight from its opening scenes to its outrageous ending. Here’s the quickie synopsis from the Internet Movie Database:

A sweet mother takes a little too much at heart for the defense of her family.

Okay, that’s a really awful and misleading synopsis that does not begin to reveal the wonder of this film. I’ll discuss the movie in more details once I do this...

Turner is radiant as housewife and mother Beverly Sutphin. She is a perfect wife and mom in almost every respect, except that she is also a clearly insane and murderously clever serial killer. She’ll murder because someone has wronged a member of her family. She’ll criminally harass someone for stealing a parking space. She’ll kill to cover her tracks. And God forbid you fail to recycle or dare to wear white after Labor Day.

Watterson is perfect as her befuddled and devoted husband. Lake is darling as the daughter seeking romance. Matthew Lillard is great fun as Turner’s horror movie loving son. From this first role, Lillard went on to appear in many movies, including multiple turns as Shaggy in Scooby-Doo cartoons and live-action films. What comes across in all these performances is that this family loves one another, even when Mom is certifiable and deadly.

Beverly keeps killing while two police detectives build their case against her. She murders with such a sense of joy and righteousness that you can’t help but smile and outright laugh at these killings. Though there’s some gore, this is more dark comedy than out-and-out horror movie. Especially when Beverly has her day in court. That’s when the movie gets so outlandishly wonderful that I’m pretty sure I was cackling with delight.

According to Wikipedia, when he reviewed Serial Mom, the late Roger Ebert found “some of Waters' satire effective” but felt “Kathleen Turner's decision to portray her character's mental illness with realism instead of in a campy fashion made the character difficult to laugh at:

“Watch Serial Mom closely and you'll realize that something is miscalculated at a fundamental level. Turner's character is helpless and unwitting in a way that makes us feel almost sorry for her - and that undermines the humor. She isn't funny crazy, she's sick crazy.”

I beg to differ. A campy performance would have made Beverly little more than a clown. It’s because she’s so loving and normal in most ways that her also being a serial killer evokes much of the film’s humor. It’s outrageous humor, to be sure, but it sort of sneaks up on as you realize Beverly never doubts the necessity of rightness or what she does.

Serial Mom gets “Best Mom Movie” of the day from me. Turner should have been Oscar-nominated for her performance. Seeing many familiar actors and celebrities in various roles added to the sheer fun of this film. It’s a keeper - or will be as soon as I buy a copy for myself - and a movie I’ll watch again.

Mother's Boys (1993) is unique. It’s the only movie or TV show I’ve seen in which Jamie Lee Curtis is terrible. It pains me to write this - because I have adored Jamie Lee Curtis for decades - but even her Activia commercials are more riveting than her performance in this drama/thriller.

Here’s the IMDb synopsis:

Jude Madigan abandons her husband Robert and her three sons without any explanation. Three years later Jude inexplicably returns to reunite her family. However Robert and his new lover Callie see Jude for the true psychopath she is and try their best to protect their sons. Jude embarks on a non stop stalking and harassment campaign against the family, and even seduces her eldest son Kess into committing her acts of violence.

Serial Mom’s Beverly Sutphin is insane. Curtis’ Jude Madigan is a self-centered sociopath. The movie - based on a novel by Bernard Taylor, written by Barry Schneider and Richard Hawley, directed by Yves Simoneau - was touted as a “Fatal Attraction” for the 1990s, but finished hopelessly short of that goal. While I didn’t like Fatal Attraction, mostly because I found Michael Douglas’ character to be completely unsympathetic, Glenn Close played possessive crazy lady much better than Curtis does here. In Fatal Attraction, it takes a while for viewers to realize just how crazy and dangerous Close’s character is. In this movie, from the moment we see her, Jude’s so obviously crazy and dangerous that not even her own children should trust her. Of course, much of the movie revolves around her seducing her oldest son into helping her carrying out her murderous plans.

As Robert Madigan, Peter Gallagher is every bit as unsympathetic as Michael Douglas was in Fatal Attraction. He seems more than a bit nuts himself, so much so that I was expecting some sort of switch where it turned out he was the real sociopath. He’s not. He’s just an actor doing a bad job.

As Callie Harland, assistant principal and Robert’s new girlfriend, Joanne Whalley is sympathetic, but not interesting. I wanted to see a moment where she stands up and becomes more than Jude’s victim, but, even with her heroic attempt to rescue the oldest son when one of Jude’s plans puts the boy in mortal jeopardy, the actress could not overcome the inadequate screenplay.

There are some good performances in the movie. Vanessa Redgrave is terrific as Jude’s mother, an elderly woman who loves Robert, the boys and Callie, who recognizes her daughter is dangerous, and who might have some darkness in her own past, though that last is only hinted at. Luke Edwards is very good as the oldest Madigan son, and Colin Ward and Joey Zimmerman are convincing as his younger brothers.

The movie moves very slowly. There is one unsettling scene in which a naked Jude stands up in a bathtub to show her caesarean scar to her oldest son. There is a cheap “gotcha moment” about an hour in as that son has a nightmare about his father, a lame scare attempt repeated at the end of the movie when the boy has a dream about a hospital morgue. I groaned at that one.

The movie picked up in its last twenty minutes, but that may have just been me recognizing it was finally heading toward some sort of conclusion. At that conclusion, it’s just a movie that goes out of its way not to have a body count higher than one, that doesn’t have any true “gotcha moments,” that is neither scary not suspenseful, and which, save for the frequent potty mouths, could have passed as a made-for-TV movie.

If you’ve read the spoiler bits for Mother’s Boys, you can likely guess I am not recommending this movie. Even with the ever-lovely wearing short tight skirts and sometimes much less, I would rather have back the 96 minutes I spent watching it. Sigh.